


how to pretend

by yellowsuns



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, I don't know what this is., I don't know., I forgot how to do this., I'm sorry.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:29:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23295541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowsuns/pseuds/yellowsuns
Summary: Innocent then,Way back before we knew how to pretend,Picking up where we left,It ain't meant to be easy, shouldn't be hard as this,And I ain't responsible,For letting this go.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Shuri, James "Bucky" Barnes/Shuri, Mentions of other relationships.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	how to pretend

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. This story doesn't make sense. It's unedited. 
> 
> My brain is fried. I have an assessment due in 9 hours. I'm finding ways to be distracted. I have my placements in ED at the moment. I haven't slept in 21 hours. This is just some pent-up shit I have bottled and this is how my brain has decided to release it. 
> 
> So here's a story from way back when. *BTW... not meant to be a pity cry out for any thing; I just need to release some shit for the sake of not bottling it up.*
> 
> If you want cathartic vibes to hopefully drive this home, then listen to Lewis Capaldi’s “Don’t Get Me Wrong” while reading this.

He missed her, and the vodka he’s burning through seems to have heightened that. He only needed to send one message, and he knew she would have no issues finding the place, because it was once theirs. It was their drink, their song on the timely jukebox that the bar still kept and their table. Even if she stood him up tonight, he doesn’t have it in him to feel anything about it. Because then it would really mean it was over.

Whatever it was they had between them, started simmering from the moment it started and even while they both knew it wouldn’t end in a chapel with happy smiles and rings of gold and pews with loved ones, they both knew the disaster that would follow. The ruins of their unhealthy relationship laid bare before them.

It was almost funny. How they thought they’d made it together if they just tried. But they had tried too many times and they had both dealt with the consequences often enough it was second nature to get back together after every ‘break’ they had.

_Trying_ was referring to the fight they had as a ‘thing’. Solid ownership. 

_“Hey that thing we yelled at each other about, yeah, I’m sorry, especially if you couldn't help it.”_

_“Hey remember that thing you did 2 months ago with the thing and the other thing that ended up being this one big thing…, yeah, I remember that shit.”_

_“I don’t want to talk about the thing, just fuck me and it’ll be done for.”_

Even their friends had started to notice how heavy it weighed on them. Steve suggested they take a longer break, perhaps there was still something to be salvaged. Sam thought a vacation would do them some good. Natasha told him to suck it up or leave, the woman and her candidness ever so polite. T’Challa offered couples therapy, his mindset similar to that of Steve. Okoye warned her from the beginning much to Sam’s dismay who orchestrated their first meeting thinking they’d be great for each other. Ayo simply didn’t care, opting for a subtler way of saying the same thing Natasha said.

But a relationship shouldn’t be scraping at the very last inch of whatever tolerance they still had for each other, and the reminder that what they had between them now had been reduced to tolerance, made him all the more disgusted at how long and how far they had wrung this thing out. To a zilch. To a ground-breaking zero. Headliners out, it wasn’t a surprise, they shouldn’t be shocked at the result.

His phone dinged a notification from her, and he lets the battered thing drop on the table. He really needs a new phone, and his thoughts travel, bound for the earliest memory he has of them, fighting, resulting in the now suffering device.

And he mused, this was for the best.

He scrolled through their photo album one more time. Trekking through with every flick of his thumb as his mind sort through every memory tied to each passing picture.

Time could heal, life could still go on. Around him at least. But everything seemed to revolve around _her._

Every breath. Every moment. Every expression. Every hidden ache he had to bottle. Finally cracking under pressure that night. He hadn’t meant everything he said. He doesn’t remember what he said, but he remembers every tug of emotion on her face. The way her shock, at his words, rippled through him, then her crestfallen face, finally ending him. Every word, begrudgingly, wasn’t worth it. Had he just run out of everything he held dear for her? Had he just decided on a whim that every candle he held to her, had eventually shone brighter? Perhaps he could try to rack right through every single item of their dirty hamper, as they took a likely unhealthy portion of exhausting every possible distraction from their impending end. Damn. Had he just tried to pick up a dirty sock, an apology here, a conversation there. But he couldn’t just all the blame. There are two pairs in the hamper. Alike yet on two different wavelengths coming together to meet one stupid, very stupid end. Just like that.

Just how unpredictable is it. Love that weighs, love that doesn’t hold every wrong action to bring up in the next fight, love that ticks in his mouth, loathing the very woman he is supposed to, love. It stopped becoming love the moment he became desperate to stay too long. Guess they both we’re lead on by something that dangled before them enticingly, but after that first sweet taste, soon turned sour.

No one takes responsibility. Nobody owns up.

But when he lifted his head to gaze at the strange woman who familiarly had just been wearing his clothes not even a month ago.

He’d love to tell whatever she wants. So he started there.

“I miss you.”

He really does, and the vodka he’s burning through seems to heighten that.

“Yeah… that’s nice isn’t it,” she murmured through a vapour of smoke through her lips. Her words are few when he knows she’s capable of more. When they first met and she rambled about art majors with Doc Marten boots and bitter coffee’s and nonsensical tattoos, when she’s passionate about the marches and the workshops for her activist campaigns, when she gushed about Michelle Obama’s book and Charly Cox’s poetry, or at 3 am in his bed when she’s memorising a presentation for her engineering class, when she would scold him for leaving the toilet seat up or even when she’s green sick and tucked in bed, she always had more to say, and he could never tire from hearing her voice. So, when she stopped short of bidding him any last words, his heart ached for more words of affirmation.

He hated that most. Because that hurt the most.

And as he watched her pull a twenty from her purse, his teeth rots, his gut swirled something foul, because she never looked back, and he wished she could ramble one last time.

_Don’t get me wrong._ He would plead.

But he’d rather not stay too long.

**Author's Note:**

> Stay safe.  
> Wash your hands.  
> Don't neglect your loved ones.  
> If you happen to know a health care worker (HCW), check up on them.  
> 


End file.
